No. 5 seed Kyle Tate was staring down a buoy-and-a-half deficit to No. 4 seed Chet Raley heading into yesterday’s Last Chance tournament at Victory Lake in Jacksonville, Fla. But on the very last day of July, and thus the last day of round 1, Kyle put up a huge score of 3 buoys at 41-feet off to punch his ticket into the second round.

Here’s how the first round match ups went down:

No. 1 seed Todd Ristorcelli lived up to top billing by posting a score of 3 at 41, enough to edge Jay Leach by a buoy;

Kyle’s 3 at 41 took this match up after trailing Chet Raley’s score of 2 at 41 for most of the month;

In the second upset of the first round – seeding wise anyway – Regina Jaquess used her world record pending score of 3-1/2 at 41 to top Ben Favret’s 2 at 41;

Chad Scott and Dave Miller both tied with 2-1/2 at 41, but No. 2 seed Chad will advance as the rules awarded ties to the higher seed.

So, the Final Four match ups are:

As the first round kicked off we invited fans to get involved by picking who they think will advance in each round. We’ll announce the winner of the Round 1 prize package soon.

The virtual tournament has three rounds: rounds of 8, 4 and 2 competitors. In each round a higher seed will face off against a lower seed (seeds determined by IWWF ranking). It’s “virtual” because the first two rounds will use scores from any AWSA and/or Water Ski Canada tournaments the competitors ski in during the months of July (round of 8) and August (round of 4).

At the end of the month, the skier that has the single highest score from any AWSA- or Water Ski Canada-sanctioned tournament (regardless of sanctioning class) will win that bracket and advance. In other words, during the first two rounds skiers won’t ski head-to-head at the same tournament, we’ll just use their scores from that month to determine the winner.

While the first two rounds will each take place virtually over many weeks, the final round will be a live head-to-head face off at a record-capability tournament we are hosting on Sept. 10 and 11, at Goode Ski Lake in Ogden, Utah.